"The Neo-Nazis"

I have a notebook I scribble down ideas in. Well, actually I have
three -- two for general things, one for HTML and design ideas. My
oldest notebook is full mostly of ideas for the MUD I want to eventually
sit down and code. I've never felt like any graphical online network
could offer the flexibility that games are eventually going to require,
and I've wanted to see if I'm capable of taking what gamers want
and actually building what they envision. I'm not talking about MUDs
in this 'Box -- I was just explaining why the notebook is filled up
with ideas for a mere text MUD. Anyway, I've had a list of possible
Soapbox topics that I've run out of room on, and I kind of just
scribble something down wherever there's room.

When I was in London with Anna, Anna had gone to take a shower and I
was sitting on her bed, thumbing through the various magazines left
on top of it. In The Face, a pretty cool British
magazine which, to my knowledge, still has no web site but has pretty
cool photos in it, had an inside look into a group of Aryans,
Neo-Nazis, living in Idaho or Iowa or some small state. The group
of people live in their own community in the middle of nowhere,
xenophobic and convinced their path is the right one.
The article was informative, remaining fairly objective even
though the people interviewed fully expressed their views on a white
America and the detrimental effects of outsiders. As expected, the
children of the compound were being raised under their parents'
principles, and the parents were pleased to be furthering their
mentality through procreation and education.

I finished the article before Anna was done, and I don't remember being
overly angry about the whole thing until after I'd finished reading it.
It was more of an educational process than anything else -- you hear the
usual media slant and the details which have been filtered through
a dozen journalists, but here you were dealing with the
survivalist/separatist people who gave their views up front. You
realize just how emotionally crippled some people out there are. You're
left shocked, wondering how people can truly believe what they're
spewing.

At that point, I jotted this topic down in my notebook for when I got
home, so I could write about it. A few months later, I wonder why I
was so motivated to do a 'Box on it. I mean, a piece against racism
is not exactly controversial. It's preaching to the choir. So what
original slant can I offer here that you haven't already run through
your minds a few times after hearing about racism in a 90's America?

I don't have a slant. There's no fascinating upheaval of ideas or
slicing of doctrines I can write down in this 'Box. The fact is that
these people believe that pure white people, the long-time descendents
of the original settlers of the United States, should remain in power
and weed the minorities, publicly, into jobs of servitude or
lower status, and privately, out of the country altogether, if not
into death.

The fact is that these people live in the past, longing for better
days they didn't even play a part in, hating people who are different
from them in an effort to preserve the possessive, jealous, superior,
insecure, rebel, anti-society, anachronistic history they've inherited.

There isn't much point in debating whether or not minorities are equal
to whites or not. This is subjective and you're always going to hate
a group of people if that's what you believe in. Hating whole races
does not require valid or reasonable grounds. You just see that color,
or see that name, and think hate.

On the other hand, Neo-Nazis will argue that the United States originated
as a white man's country and that's the way it should remain. While the
most basic counterargument is that the Native Americans were here in
this country first, Neo-Nazis have an underlying mentality that it
was the white man who brought culture and order to the Indian society.
Europe was the pinnacle of sophistication and intelligence and humanity.

Early Europe was made up of Greeks and Italians. The Greeks fought
and mixed with the great Persian civilization, and the Romans were
dismantled by the barbaric Gallic heathens. Egyptians and northern
Africans heavily influenced both cultures. The Chinese culture views
American culture as crude and undisciplined. European culture is
full of excess, temptation, lavish grandeur.

Anglo-Saxons hardly come from pure roots. They consist of a lot of
mixed races. Purity is impossible; there is bound to be mixing
of genetic roots somewhere along the line. Not only is mixing
unavoidable, it's also desirable. Unless one is willing to toss
out most all of the bases of sociobiological and anthropological
findings (which I suspect would be an easy option for many Neo-Nazis),
it's difficult to distort the fact that a wider genepool is a more
effective one. The more diverse one's genes, the better the immune
system and the better the variety of the eventual DNA makeup. A
pure genetic background leads itself to amplifying the weaknesses
and concentrating the strengths, effectively widening said weaknesses
and thinning out the strengths. A diverse background incorporates the
developments of different races of people, softening out gaping holes
of weakness and adding new traits which have been beneficial in
another race's evolution.

I myself am the product of a slew of different Great British races and
of Chinese ancestry. I have a wide mix, not a strained, inert genetic
background which leads to devastating problems in later generations.

So there is no basis for this fantastic pure Aryan race. What are you
left with? Claiming ownership over the United States? What claim,
exactly, do these unintelligent, white trash country bumpkins have
over a large country which is thriving even though it's integrating
races?

Absolutely none. The swastika (I read an article or two about the
swastika's other uses throughout history, which have been symbolic
of happier thoughts than Nazism) and the Hitler-wrought Nazi machine
are what these Neo-Nazis look back to for guidance. Let us not forget
that that whole thing happened in Germany and not
the United States. Sure, it was about stamping out non-whites, but
it was also about pulling together Germany, a failing country, into
an awesome industrial powerhouse of nationalism and technology.

I will venture to presume that most Neo-Nazis living in America do
not have strong German ties.

I will also presume that if the Nazis of the early twentieth century
could see these hicks living in isolated compounds, they'd laugh their
asses off. There is nothing sexy, intriguing, and enticing about
uneducated, technophobic, God-fearing Jim Bobs looking for a war that
will never come. Sad to say, but at least the Nazis knew the importance
of education and knowledge enough to, as a defensive and fearful move,
alter the media and burn books. At least they created some impressive
military weapons, strategies, and experiments.

Quite frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if a high-ranked German officer
wouldn't even hesitate to put a bullet in the back of the head of a
Neo-Nazi. Hey, you're from America, our enemy, and you don't speak
German. Why should I let you live?

What is it with Thomas Jefferson? What is it with the "ecce
signum" chants? Wassup with the four uppercase Greek gammas
forming a swastika? Are these supposed to give the cause a
sophisticated, intelligent, timeless aspect? "If it's Latin or
Greek, it must be sophisticated." I've heard that before. And
it's highly convincing, too. Well, me vescere, pal.

Are these people so desperate about their own failures as human
beings that they group up with other lost souls and find
scapegoats for their own patheticalness? Why do they look back to
times which they were not even a part in? Why do they
distort the 200 year old words of American politicians and praise the
actions of a European country that took place 60 years ago?

It's amazing how proud some Southerners can be about a war they got
beaten in, the Civil War. It's even more amazing that they still
believe in their cause. Welcome to modernity, people. Let go of
that tenuous grasp you have on the past and try to accept the fact
that the old days are long gone, with good reason. Do you want to
return to the days of sharecropping? Having a small outhouse full of
slaves to boss around, mistreat, and rape? How do you intend to
make a profit on cotton and tobacco now? We all know
how well the agricultural industry is doing right now. Or do you just
want to live in a world of people who are all white, who all speak
your exact dialect, who follow the same civilized principles you do?
What are you afraid of?

I for one welcome interbreeding. I've already stated in a previous
Soapbox that I think the human race will eventually become, truly,
the human race, instead of a group of many races collectively combined
to make up a species. World travel, relocation, and dropping of uptight
and insecure biases are all contributing to intermarriage and multiracial
children. You better get used to it -- we'll all be mongrels soon enough.

No doubt some die-hard racists will be driven over the edge, thinking
all hope is lost. Interestingly enough, Millennium did (I write this
in October) an episode on how a group of men believed the Y2K bug
would cause shutdown, and every man would have to fight for himself,
everyone would have to keep himself alive. Frank's annoying hanger-on
asked him at the end of the episode, "So, what do you think will happen
in the year 2000?" Frank said, "I believe we'll have to retain our
humanity, or else we'll have nothing."

The intermixing of cultures and ideas and beliefs and backgrounds
is our humanity. To believe that cultures should
remain completely separate is something which just smacks of juvenile
thinking. It is insecure, in that I don't like you because you are
different from me. It is entirely naive and unfounded, since there
is obviously an ignorance of the rest of the world, of the most powerful
cultures in world history which were NOT European. It is possessive --
this is my ball and you can't play with it.

I can't say that racism has been dismantled completely, and only the
extremists are still racist -- a lot of people I know are bitter towards
reverse discrimination, or wary of preferential treatment of whites, or
even have aversions to blacks and hispanics. And they're not all
white. There's a lot of closet prejudice still out there, based on
generalizations, stereotypes, and the evening news. There's a lot
of open hostility in other parts of the world regarding racism. But
things HAVE come a long way, and equality obviously still has a long
way to go.

Luckily, the Neo-Nazis in this Soapbox will likely have no influence
in the way things will be. They're too mired in their own poverty,
insecurity, envy of successful people, and outdated thinking to
consider the outside world, which in my opinion has not yet begun
to reach its full potential through the mixing of genes, philosophies,
and cultures.

Adaptation is where it's at, baby -- sloth and stubbornness will only
lead to your extinction.

So...all these thoughts raced through my mind in a two minute span and were
put on hold until months later when I wrote this. Anna finished her
shower and came back to the room and we kissed. The aggravation of
reading that article quickly evaporated. :)